Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor: Stacey Trombley & Rebecca Sky
Mentee: Rebecca Schaeffer
Title: QUEEN OF PARTS
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Dark Fantasy
Word count: 85,000

Pitch:

Nita doesn’t murder monsters and sell them online.

Her mother does that.

Nita just dissects and packages their bodies. But when her mother brings a live one home, Nita decides to follow her conscience and help him escape — and ends up sold on the black market in his place.

DEXTER meets THIS SAVAGE SONG.

Excerpt:

Nita stared at the dead body lying on the kitchen table. Middle-aged, and in the place between pudgy and overweight, he wore a casual business suit and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with silver handles that blended into the gray at his temples. He was indistinguishable on the outside from any other human — the inside, of course, was a different matter.

“Another zannie?” Nita scowled at her mother and crossed her arms as she examined the body. “That’s not even Peruvian. I thought we moved to Peru to hunt South American unnaturals? Chupacabras and pishtacos and whatever.”

It wasn’t that zannies were common, but Nita had dissected an awful lot of them during the months she and her mother spent in Southeast Asia last year. She’d been looking forward to dissecting something new. If she wanted to cut up the same unnaturals as usual, she would have asked to stay with her dad in the States and work on unicorns.

Her mother shrugged, draping her jacket over a chair. “I saw a zannie, so I killed it. I mean, it was right in front of me. How could I resist?” Her mother’s black and red striped bangs fell forward as she dipped her head and half-smiled.

Nita shifted her feet, looking at the corpse again. She sighed. “I suppose you’ll want me to dissect and package it for sale?”

“Good girl.” Her mother grinned.